Watch Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever For Free

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Big. Loud. Dumb. Hollow. Notorious train wreck and box office failure. Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever is all of these things, and yet somehow I still got a kick out of it, albeit in the shallow end of the speedometer. I know what you're thinking.. "wow, another turd that Nate is polishing up with multiple syllable words to make it seem like less of a piece of crap." Well, you're not wrong. I fully concede that this is one huge glorious, post Mexican food pile of poop, but there's something about it that pulls me in every time it shows up on SyFy or some such channel. Maybe it's the fact that it's one of those rare films that not only is shot in my hometown of Vancouver, but actually set here too. Mostly Vancity just doubles for Chicago, New York or any other Yankee metropolis, but director Kaos (yes that's his name) chose to tell the story right here in my little burg. Speaking of story, or lack thereof, it's one big shredded mess of a plot involving Ecks (Antonio Banderas) and Sever (Lucy Liu) two former federal agents out to get each other, eventually working together and then both becoming chumps in some ludicrous government conspiracy involving arch villain Gant (Gregg Henry, hammy as ever). It makes little to no sense, it's so convoluted it prompts the viewer to throw their hands up in exhausted defeat and give up hope on any cohesion, instead letting a wave of schitty early 2000's special effects and over elaborate, unwarranted stunt work to wash over them like a tidal wave of rejected video game cutscenes. And poor Vancouver, looking like a ghost town, just gets blown to smithereens by these trigger happy, matrix wardrobed, scowling lunatics. I'd probably stay off the streets too if Lucy Liu massacring hordes of VPD officers was in the forecast, or on second thought maybe not, that sounds kind of hot. I'm rambling, but any review of this film has the right to get sidetracked and ramble as much as this pile of wanton sound and fury does for the entirety of its scant runtime. It's disastrous to be sure, but does that make me pick up the remote and switch over to something else when it's on? Not really. Plus, despite the actual film, this has to have one of the coolest looking DVD cover posters ever designed. I mean, look at it.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002): Dir: Wych Kaosayananda / Cast: Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Greg Henry, Talisa Soto, Sandrine Holt: Mindless fight between two opposing factors. Title sounds like a pathetic wrestling match. Two agents are pitted against each other for a violent confrontation. Antonio Banderas believes Lucy Liu is responsible for the disappearance of his wife while she is missing her son and responds by kidnapping the son of an evil agency. Predictable glorified violence stylized by director Wych Kaosayananda and sold as the lowest form of entertainment. Watching commercials about laundry detergent is more entertaining than anything that happens in this degrading piece of crap. Both Banderas and Lucy Liu beat the living snot out of each other before turning their guns upon the real villains. Both are unsympathetic and the screenplay does little to appeal their case to us. We're just waiting for a violent showdown and a lot of boredom. Greg Henry plays the standard villain who will get his ass handed to him because that is about the height of creativity in this junk. Talisa Soto plays his underwritten wife who just came from the Mortal Kombat movies, so it is obvious that she isn't taking a step up. There is no purpose to this garbage other than to showcase action violence and low level writing at its very worst. Pathetic showcase goes totally ballistic with stupidity. Score: 1 / 10

This movie is in the IMDb bottom 10 and it has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Of course, I bought a copy (for $2.00) when the opportunity came up, hoping, in a perverse way, of getting some satisfaction and laughs out of it. I didn't. This is a continuously clichéd, CGI currency burner that will challenge your kindness and your perseverance. Its the kind of movie where the main character walks away, in slow-motion, while a car explodes in the background. Its the kind of movie where Lucy Lui uses a mounted machine gun to mow down multiple nameless S.W.A.T. teams and decimate a downtown CGI landscape in slow-motion. Expect a lot of 360 degree pans, "the Matrix" style bullet time shite, horrible fight choreography, and as many story clichés as you can think of. In other words, you've seen this movie many, many times before. Trust me. It wasn't even halfway funny. I think we got 2 smallish laughs out of it, and as such, recommend that you skip. Sometimes, the "so bad its good" theory fails, and this is a perfect example of that. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

The acting of both Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas is very low-key - same as you would expect from main roles in a Western; very simplistic and sparse, seemingly shallow were it not for the implicit references to shared knowledge, which the audience is only let in on through flash-backs or from other characters. This way of acting suits them both excellently, and creates an attractive ambient atmosphere, energized by their martial encounters and growing mutual sympathy.The bad guys (Gregg Henry as Gant and Ray Park as his right hand Ross) do not contribute a whole lot to this movie. Gant is the sinister/smug/self-absorbed crook which Gregg also embodied as Val Resnick in Payback, and Ross' vocabulary is annoyingly redundant, particularly his constant use of the euphemism 'cancel' (one might be inclined to blame this on the script, but more subtle acting could have pulled it off by not emphasizing 'cancel' each time).Perhaps what I like most about this movie is that Lucy has a major role. In her other movies she is mostly spice to the plot, although Lucky Number Slevin does allow her personality to surface. To me, Ballistic is the best Lucy-movie. She makes a very lovely femme fatale, even agonizingly crisp in a catsuit.Do not watch this movie if you consider lack of dialog synonymous with shallow acting, or if you are just not a fan of low-key acting. If, on the other hand, you enjoy good atmosphere in a movie, Ballistic may be one of those you want to return to from time to time.I give it a low 7, and would have gone higher if the feel of the movie were not occasionally fractured by the Gant and Ross characters.